HR needs to tackle international question (Analysis)

Mentoring and bridging programs most popular choices to integrate IEPs

By Claude Balthazard

06/01/2009|Canadian HR Reporter|Last Updated: 06/02/2009

The issue of internationally educated professionals (IEPs) is one the HR profession still has to come to grips with. In 2006, the Ontario legislature passed the Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act to ensure the registration practices of professional regulatory bodies did not impose unfair barriers to the registration of IEPs. Similar acts were passed in two other provinces — Manitoba and Nova Scotia. Although these acts do not apply to the HR profession, the integration of IEPs into HR is an issue we need to address.

About one in three respondents to the Pulse Survey indicate they are IEPs. This is likely an over-representation of this segment. (The fact we don’t have a good handle on the number of IEPs in HR speaks volumes in and of itself.) This is not really a surprise as the topic of the survey would be of special interest to this segment. To correct for this over-sampling of IEPs, we looked at the responses of IEPs and non-IEPs separately.

It is not surprising to find IEPs and non-IEPs have different opinions. Indeed, 61.4 per cent of IEPs, but only 23.5 per cent of non-IEPs, think the HR profession should do a lot more to attract and integrate IEPs into the profession; 72 per cent of IEPs, but only 29.3 per cent of non-IEPs, think the attraction and integration of IEPs should be among the top priorities of our professional associations. As well, IEPs feel it is more important for professional HR associations to offer programs to attract and integrate IEPs into the HR profession than non-IEPs.